The Datamax Thinking Blog

A successful Vertical Marketing plan requires education, in-depth collaboration and a discovery period of investigating the day-to-day workflow of a specific organization.

In business, sales representatives plant seeds all the time through their interactions with prospects and clients. But how committed they are to acquainting themselves with and nurturing these relations once planted, often determines ultimate long-term growth.

Consider Vertical Marketing the ultimate exercise in studying and tending to individual seeds, learning each nuance and developing growth consistently based on relevant client needs. It’s much more than canned brochures or pre-determined sales pitches. It’s a duel effort of zeroing in on a specific market’s shared challenges and objectives, and finding relative solutions that produce long-term results.

The central objective of utilizing EDM is to make your overall business processes more efficient, and specifically to accelerate and properly secure the way you move documents across your office. 

In the months before they toe the starting line, many runners and endurance athletes mistakenly obsess over one attribute through their training plan - speed. However, to maintain top efficiency in their movements and to keep these movements sharp as possible, agility - a combination of speed, control and coordination – is a critical part of everyday training.

Agility is also the key, big picture component to proficient document workflow. It's not just how fast you operate - it's how coordinated and efficient those efforts are.

The burden of administrators handling an entire fleet can be significantly lifted by usability improvements and features that simply make doing their job more efficient.

Visiting a car dealership (even if today, most buyers’ research is done online beforehand), there’s multiple variables to consider. Beyond budget and leasing options, one must consider speed (that sleek, streamlined sports car), functionality (the gas-friendly cross-over with room for the dog), safety/security, as well as that inevitable drop in value with that vehicle moving forward.   

The same used to be said about copiers.

You have a lot of options on the market when you make a technology purchase. The best solution for your business isn't determined solely by the price, the feature set, or how fast the vendor gets it to your doorstep.

Every year, I learn more about copiers, document management, workflow, and, increasingly, managed IT topics.

I do my best to pass on what I learn to you.

Here are the 11 most popular posts in 2017. They cover a range of topics:

• Why you should update old equipment (while I didn’t get into it, this goes for most office technology – not just your copiers!)
• HIPAA compliance issues
• The value of PDF and automated Bates Stamping for law firms
• And some thoughts on costs

Read on for insights into those topics – and more – to get yourself ready for 2018! 

Your 15 year old copier still works. Great. Is that costing your office productivity benefits that newer equipment could deliver?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

In many cases, that's not a bad rule to follow.

On the other hand, the copiers, printers, and other office equipment you use now might not be broken (they still work), but could do with some fixing anyway.

Buying one, centralized multifunction printer for your office will save money, right? It's not as simple as that.

Centralizing your multifunction copiers makes a lot of sense. You don't need to buy multiple machines to cover all of the departments, the IT team can easily network and troubleshoot them, and you won't have employees wandering around trying to figure out where to get their copies.

This configuration works out great, in theory. In practice, you could end up with the MFP becoming the de facto water cooler. When staff makes their way to the digital copier to pick up their papers, they may take a socialization trip at the same time.

Take the time to get the right office equipment or your communications – internally and with customers – could suffer.

When companies buy printers or digital copiers from us, they're not all that interested in the actual equipment. What you actually get from the purchase is communication.

It's a fact of life, copiers are machines and they sometimes break. Here are six steps to take to keep from losing your cool.

Printers and copiers have a unique ability: the more these technologically advanced devices break down, the more primal you become in turn. This transition starts with an open palm hit, and then a kick, and then more profanity than you might otherwise use at work. Toward the end you are re-enacting the dawn of man obelisk scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Printers and copiers will break down; however, you can minimize their ability to transform you by following these six simple steps.

Process automation won't eliminate all tasks you have throughout the day, but you can gain enough time that you get to leave work on time and enjoy your night.

You're the glue that keeps the office running smoothly. When you do your job right, it might appear like you're not doing anything at all, which couldn't be further from the truth. Whether you're researching the latest technology improvements or maintaining a collaborative environment, you're putting in a lot of hard work.

Process improvements cover everything from scanning your paperwork with digital copiers to enter them into a document management system to streamlining current workflows. They benefit the business in many ways and find a way to go from the beginning to end in the most efficient way possible. But what do they do for YOU?

The point in time when you acquire a new print device is the perfect time to improve your workflow, provided your vendor has the expertise.

A business' copier fleet is very much a Goldilocks situation; too much or too little printing and copying capacity can create significant costs. If you print more than your fleet can handle, you are going to have to replace devices more often. If you have more capacity than you need, you are paying too much to the detriment of other areas of your business.